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Zalphon
2015-07-14, 03:27 PM
I am writing up a new game system with its own setting. It is loosely based on 2e in some mechanical regards (e.g. Non-Weapon Proficiencies), but is otherwise unique. I will say that the setting is a bit inspired by the Tippyverse in some regards and is a bit of a deconstruction of the typical D&D setting.

My friends were utterly perturbed to discover that I intended to implement NPCs without statblocks. Only for specific NPCs and none of them is a figure of day-to-day life. They're more figures of myth and lore than what you'd expect to see. Some even debate their existence.

My friends argued that it is unjust and a betrayal of the players to not stat out NPCs, to which I rebutted with "any DM can do it, but canonically, I do not wish to give them stat blocks."

My reasoning is this. These NPCs aren't meant so much to be enemies (which if statted, is all they will be reduced to), but are more pieces of the narrative of the setting, as well as illogical to stat.

One instance is the last surviving dragon of the setting. He's one of the NPCs who I feel statting would be dishonoring. He's the last of a dead race and dates back older than some of the gods (all of which have disappeared). He is quite literally the oldest surviving being in the setting.

I feel reducing what could be used as a great plot device to a mere enemy to be killed as soon as the players are of level is a great waste. Countless have tried to kill him in the setting's lore, but nobody ever succeeds. And I hope that should serve as a warning to players (although some will take it as a challenge, just like some attempt to slay the Lady of Pain). But even beyond my affection for said NPC, how does one stat such a being?

With his incredibly advanced age (and the fact that dragons go stronger with age), as well as the fact that it's more than possible he'd have learned the various forms of magic, I feel statting him would do one of two things:

a) Create a game/lore inconsistency. If a few mortals can defeat what an entire race considers to be their god, what does that say for him?

b) Create an unwinnable NPC that players define as cheap and unfair. "Why does he have so many Hit Dice and so many powers? How can we possibly beat him?"

So, I am looking to you all for counsel. I want to leave him unstatted, but if somebody can advise what would be better than that, feel free. I'm more than willing to hear opinions.

Knaight
2015-07-14, 03:32 PM
Leave them unstatted. There are plenty of games which don't provide statistics for every NPC mentioned, including more than a few that are a lot like D&D - which is where this whole idea of statting out every NPC in the first place comes from. The icons of 13th age have no stats. Legend of the Five Rings alludes to tons of major historical figures, almost all of which are ordinary mortals (though talented and influential). They generally don't have stats. Shadowrun didn't stat out the named leaders of its shadowy megacorps, including the one that's a literal dragon.

SMWallace
2015-07-14, 05:10 PM
Well, don't forget the paradigm that's currently the reason Lady of Pain is the only RAW "deity" to remain undefeated in 3.5; if you stat it, somebody will find a way to kill it. Taking it a step further, if you stat it and your system isn't mostly airtight, somebody will find a loophole and abuse is so hard that your supposed god becomes just a slightly larger packet of XP than normal.

That said, you can't please everybody. If you want it to be a godlike entity that even the mightiest band of adventurers would be foolish to battle, make it a godlike entity that even the mightiest band of adventurers would be foolish to battle. If your PCs get utterly swept, it's their own fault for ignoring the obvious warning signs, while if you lower it down to their level and they win, they haven't actually accomplished anything worth talking about. If you do decide to represent it mechanically, don't play it down to the level of "particularly strong monster that PCs should normally be able to fight at some level," just make it as strong as you think it truly is, and let wave after wave of high-level party try to bash their heads against it to no avail. That way, if somebody does end up defeating it, they can cheer and celebrate and talk about how great their strategy or whatever was for years to come.

(Or, at the very least, they can go onto an online message board and pretend to be an advertisement. "Kill the godlike entity of Zalphon's game in three rounds with this weird trick!")

Alternatively, you can make it's stats "no," but what's a good dungeon crawling game if you can't destabilize the cosmos a little bit every now and again?

I mean, aside from every dungeon crawler ever besides D&D...

dream
2015-07-14, 05:16 PM
Leave them unstatted. There are plenty of games which don't provide statistics for every NPC mentioned, including more than a few that are a lot like D&D - which is where this whole idea of statting out every NPC in the first place comes from. The icons of 13th age have no stats. Legend of the Five Rings alludes to tons of major historical figures, almost all of which are ordinary mortals (though talented and influential). They generally don't have stats. Shadowrun didn't stat out the named leaders of its shadowy megacorps, including the one that's a literal dragon.
+1 this.

I stopped statting-up any NPCs about two years ago. Steve Kenson, designer of Mutants & Masterminds, ICONS, Blue Rose & more wrote at length about not needing NPC stats. It's a real waste of GM time. Just have an idea where you want the NPC's/monster's bonuses/penalties to be and run with it. Keep notes as you go. And stop telling your players what you're doing: they need to think you're working reaaalllyyyy hard :smallsmile:

Zalphon
2015-07-14, 05:40 PM
One of the things about deity slaying 3.5e though is their Alter Reality Salient Divine Ability. Making it so even if the players defeat it, its really DM fiat that they didn't simply alter reality the players away. Right?

noob
2015-07-14, 05:47 PM
One of the things about deity slaying 3.5e though is their Alter Reality Salient Divine Ability. Making it so even if the players defeat it, its really DM fiat that they didn't simply alter reality the players away. Right?

Well if you start stating up someone and wants it to be really powerful there is two problems:
1: Players are crazily good at killing stuff
2: If he is so strong that players can not kill it is it kill-able and why is it not the master of the multiverse?
So just do not stat it up it is a really wrong idea.

NichG
2015-07-14, 07:44 PM
Well if you start stating up someone and wants it to be really powerful there is two problems:
1: Players are crazily good at killing stuff
2: If he is so strong that players can not kill it is it kill-able and why is it not the master of the multiverse?
So just do not stat it up it is a really wrong idea.

The canonical example of something like this is 'the sun'. The sun is ostensibly an object that exists and has influence on the world. Its also ostensibly something that could 'die' through various means. However, those means lie so far outside of the paradigm of personal-scale skirmish conflicts that its meaningless to try to give the sun stats of that sort. Yet at the same time, its not like the sun is going to go and take over the multiverse - its the sun, it sits there and glows and makes things fall into it, but that's about it. It has a lot of stability and power, but very little agency.

Thats why one of the ways to make a very high-powered NPC not wreck a setting is to make it so that their agency is strictly limited. They have ultimate power within a particular very narrow set of limits, but they lack the power to go outside of those limits. The thing is, thats exactly the opposite of the kind of power that is generally represented by the game mechanics, which are designed to give the players more and more agency as they advance in level. Such things are better off without stats, but instead with a strong sense of where the boundaries of their agency lies.

That said, I'd go beyond the saying 'if it has stats, the players will kill it' and rather say 'if it looks like it should have stats, some players will try to kill it'. If you put the sun in a human body and sit it on a throne (or a monster body or whatever), even if it is still literally the sun in addition to being that human body on a throne, the players will see 'it has a humanoid form' as 'this is something we can interact with the same way we interact with other things that have bodies and are about our size, give or take a few orders of magnitude'.

Hawkstar
2015-07-14, 08:17 PM
Well if you start stating up someone and wants it to be really powerful there is two problems:
1: Players are crazily good at killing stuff
2: If he is so strong that players can not kill it is it kill-able and why is it not the master of the multiverse?
So just do not stat it up it is a really wrong idea.

The answer to #2, when it comes to Gods is, "What part of GOD do you NOT UNDERSTAND?!"

Why is it not Master of the Multiverse? It is!

OR, "It is, except for the 12 others of equal or greater power."
The games gods play are far beyond those of mortals on a qualitative scale. Compare the abilities of a commoner to a brick with 1 HP (ANd no damage reduction/hardness), and no ability to take any sorts of actions. The brick is wondering why the commoner isn't master of the multiverse, despite so much that it can do that the brick can't.

Zalphon
2015-07-14, 08:28 PM
The answer to #2, when it comes to Gods is, "What part of GOD do you NOT UNDERSTAND?!"

Why is it not Master of the Multiverse? It is!

OR, "It is, except for the 12 others of equal or greater power."
The games gods play are far beyond those of mortals on a qualitative scale. Compare the abilities of a commoner to a brick with 1 HP (ANd no damage reduction/hardness), and no ability to take any sorts of actions. The brick is wondering why the commoner isn't master of the multiverse, despite so much that it can do that the brick can't.

I just have to say, that's an amazing comparison.

And in regards to the actual topic at hand. This dragon really isn't trying to do anything besides lurk in his demi-plane. I mean there are other entities who I intend to leave statless who plan to actually take over the Planes, but they can not physically do it. They're the brains behind a huge empire and military armada, but they can't do a thing (think Mr. House from Fallout: New Vegas).

That said, I believe these entities (bot h the active and inactive ones) should be left statless. They're narrative pieces who tell the story of the setting in their own way, but its not like they physically are going to be doing the moving and shaking. They either will not, or can not. If they were doing the moving and shaking, they would have stat blocks.

Does that make sense?

dream
2015-07-14, 08:44 PM
I just have to say, that's an amazing comparison.

And in regards to the actual topic at hand. This dragon really isn't trying to do anything besides lurk in his demi-plane. I mean there are other entities who I intend to leave statless who plan to actually take over the Planes, but they can not physically do it. They're the brains behind a huge empire and military armada, but they can't do a thing (think Mr. House from Fallout: New Vegas).

That said, I believe these entities (bot h the active and inactive ones) should be left statless. They're narrative pieces who tell the story of the setting in their own way, but its not like they physically are going to be doing the moving and shaking. They either will not, or can not. If they were doing the moving and shaking, they would have stat blocks.

Does that make sense?
Perfect sense :smallsmile:

goto124
2015-07-14, 09:00 PM
But aren't there a lot of mundane NPCs? What do you do when a PC engages a mundane NPC in combat? Go to mechanics-independant, DM-fiat-based combat as if it were roleplay? Force the PC and/or NPC out of combat in contrived manners?

Zalphon
2015-07-14, 09:05 PM
But aren't there a lot of mundane NPCs? What do you do when a PC engages a mundane NPC in combat? Go to mechanics-independant, DM-fiat-based combat as if it were roleplay? Force the PC and/or NPC out of combat in contrived manners?

Engages a mundane NPC? Mechanics-Dependent Combat.

Engages an unstat-blocked NPC... Likely DM-fiat-based combat, as you put it.

goto124
2015-07-14, 09:07 PM
But aren't there a lot of mundane NPCs? What do you do when a PC engages a mundane NPC in combat? Go to mechanics-independant, DM-fiat-based combat as if it were roleplay, which doesn't really fly in many systems with combat mechanics? Force the PC and/or NPC out of combat in contrived manners?

Zalphon
2015-07-14, 09:13 PM
But aren't there a lot of mundane NPCs? What do you do when a PC engages a mundane NPC in combat? Go to mechanics-independant, DM-fiat-based combat as if it were roleplay, which doesn't really fly in many systems with combat mechanics? Force the PC and/or NPC out of combat in contrived manners?

A normal NPC would operate under the combat mechanics.

TheCrowing1432
2015-07-15, 01:05 AM
The canonical example of something like this is 'the sun'. The sun is ostensibly an object that exists and has influence on the world. Its also ostensibly something that could 'die' through various means. However, those means lie so far outside of the paradigm of personal-scale skirmish conflicts that its meaningless to try to give the sun stats of that sort. Yet at the same time, its not like the sun is going to go and take over the multiverse - its the sun, it sits there and glows and makes things fall into it, but that's about it. It has a lot of stability and power, but very little agency.

Thats why one of the ways to make a very high-powered NPC not wreck a setting is to make it so that their agency is strictly limited. They have ultimate power within a particular very narrow set of limits, but they lack the power to go outside of those limits. The thing is, thats exactly the opposite of the kind of power that is generally represented by the game mechanics, which are designed to give the players more and more agency as they advance in level. Such things are better off without stats, but instead with a strong sense of where the boundaries of their agency lies.

That said, I'd go beyond the saying 'if it has stats, the players will kill it' and rather say 'if it looks like it should have stats, some players will try to kill it'. If you put the sun in a human body and sit it on a throne (or a monster body or whatever), even if it is still literally the sun in addition to being that human body on a throne, the players will see 'it has a humanoid form' as 'this is something we can interact with the same way we interact with other things that have bodies and are about our size, give or take a few orders of magnitude'.



Me (A 20th level wizard): You see that bright ball up there in the sky?
The rest of the party: Um the sun?
Me: Yeah, Im gonna fight it.

BigKahuna
2015-07-15, 04:40 AM
+1 this.

I stopped statting-up any NPCs about two years ago. Steve Kenson, designer of Mutants & Masterminds, ICONS, Blue Rose & more wrote at length about not needing NPC stats. It's a real waste of GM time. Just have an idea where you want the NPC's/monster's bonuses/penalties to be and run with it. Keep notes as you go. And stop telling your players what you're doing: they need to think you're working reaaalllyyyy hard :smallsmile:

Do you remember what his reasoning for not giving NPCs stats was?

I usually stat up NPCs but I just ran a session where the party went completely off track and stormed a castle that I'd just put in for scenery. I didn't have time to stat NPCs and just came up with some basic ideas for AC/HP/Damage etc... and ran with it. It actually turned out surprisingly well and I'm thinking about switching to looser stats for NPCs.

dream
2015-07-15, 06:02 AM
Do you remember what his reasoning for not giving NPCs stats was?

I usually stat up NPCs but I just ran a session where the party went completely off track and stormed a castle that I'd just put in for scenery. I didn't have time to stat NPCs and just came up with some basic ideas for AC/HP/Damage etc... and ran with it. It actually turned out surprisingly well and I'm thinking about switching to looser stats for NPCs.
He's written on the subject in several places several times. Here's one article (http://stevekenson.com/2009/11/) from his blog.

Glad you're game went well "on-the-fly". I had the same experience when I started running PbP games years ago & dropped the whole stat business. It really sped up everything for me & gave me more time to focus on setting/PCs.

erikun
2015-07-15, 07:46 AM
In general, things without statblocks are fine. The earth (or whatever planet the setting is on) generally does not have a statblock. It doesn't have a Break DC or a big pile of HP. You simply do not interact with it on the level where a statblock would have any meaning. And if a party does happen to interact with it in such a way - if they acquire an epic-level spell or interdimensional superweapon - then it is mostly a case of answering "does this actually work?" rather than running a bunch of numbers and making a comparison.

That said, stuff like the earth/sun/Lady of Pain tend to work without statblocks because of their position. They aren't an encounter which the PCs can regularly run into, or which the PCs can kick down a door and find. They're mostly stationary, doing their own thing and becoming a feature of the landscape, moreso than an actual character. The question I have about your dragon is if it is represented in the same way. What happens if said dragon goes on a flight over the countryside? What happens if the PCs decide to break into the dragon's lair? If characters in the setting can (or potentially can) run into the dragon without too much trouble, then denying it a statblock seems to make less sense. Unless the dragon is simply untouchable - perhaps transcendent through time and so immune to damage, or simply the size of a mountain and so unharmable - then it seems odd that just a large old lizard somehow gets the same treatment as, say, trying to stab a volcano to death.

noob
2015-07-15, 08:09 AM
Personally I stab volcanoes, stars and planets to death with black holes polymorphed in chickens because it is 100% raw to turn a black hole in a chicken you can do it by creating a one way portal allowing only to cast spells through then you use trans-dimensional spell polymorph any object and since the limit is the volume it works in RAW.
If you started using stat blocks you should start with black holes since players can capture them and put them in pocket dimension if you allow PAO and the special rules of portal creation.

erikun
2015-07-15, 08:16 AM
Personally I stab volcanoes, stars and planets to death with black holes polymorphed in chickens because it is 100% raw to turn a black hole in a chicken you can do it by creating a one way portal allowing only to cast spells through then you use trans-dimensional spell polymorph any object and since the limit is the volume it works in RAW.
If you started using stat blocks you should start with black holes since players can capture them and put them in pocket dimension if you allow PAO and the special rules of portal creation.
Actually, ethereal/incorporeal forms ignore both gravity and material forces, so you don't even need a one-way portal. Just turn ethereal and you can walk right up to the center of a black hole, no problem.

The larger concern (and difficulty) would be locating one and travelling to it within a reasonable timeframe. Even today, we mostly just know about black holes through very difficult observation and through an absense of data - if something massive is affecting gravity and it's not producing any light or energy, then the estimation is that it's a black hole. Good luck identifying one with a Galileo-style telescope. (Most deities and creatures are focused on the inhabited planet, and so divining them for questions about extra-terrestial objects isn't going to be that useful.)

obryn
2015-07-15, 08:20 AM
Let me guess - your players were born & raised on 3.x/PF? :smallbiggrin:

Knaight is right. Leave him unstatted.

Frankly, unless the PCs are going to be in important conflicts with them, leave most NPCs unstatted.

noob
2015-07-15, 08:40 AM
" The larger concern (and difficulty) would be locating one and travelling to it within a reasonable timeframe. Even today, we mostly just know about black holes through very difficult observation and through an absense of data - if something massive is affecting gravity and it's not producing any light or energy, then the estimation is that it's a black hole. Good luck identifying one with a Galileo-style telescope. (Most deities and creatures are focused on the inhabited planet, and so divining them for questions about extra-terrestial objects isn't going to be that useful.) "
It might be hard to find but
1: Teleport allows super fast travel
2: No rules says you can not polymorph hydrogen in a black hole(I should have through of this before) and so you can have a black hole of duration 5+2+(2)+(2)+(2)(same family,same int,approx the same material because there is mostly hydrogen in the universe and so a black hole is probably mostly hydrogen(this modifier might not be applyed),directly related(black holes are made from hydrogen),same size if you choose the right volume of hydrogen(GM might argue that you have 0 volume of hydrogen because there is mostly void but size categories are based on the distance of the furthest particles not on total occupied volume)) so you might try to send someone disposable(like a chicken polymorphed into an human to which you give the right item) to create the black hole at the right place and it only needs to understand that in theory gravity could create black holes which is not so easy to understand but a 150 in knowledge can justify that(and you get that with one artificer and 5 +20 item who are then transmuted for giving bonuses of different kinds) but it becomes a lot weirder and cheesy than finding one.

Zalphon
2015-07-15, 10:09 AM
Let me guess - your players were born & raised on 3.x/PF? :smallbiggrin:

Knaight is right. Leave him unstatted.

Frankly, unless the PCs are going to be in important conflicts with them, leave most NPCs unstatted.

Absolutely raised on it.

And in response to this dragon flying over the countryside--he resides in his personal Demi-Plane. He really is removed from the rest of the universe.

Flickerdart
2015-07-15, 10:16 AM
I would recommend two things:

1: NPCs should enter the scene unstatted unless you expect to need those stats and the NPC is unique enough to merit them. For a scene, knowing an NPC's name, role, and attitude towards the PCs is vastly more important than his bench press.
2: NPCs should have a mechanism to quickly acquire stats as soon as it starts to matter. From the example of D&D, you could just pull out three six-siders as soon as the PCs challenge the NPC to a bench press contest. If combat (or another scene where you need a LOT of different stats) abruptly begins, you should have templates for different broad kinds of NPCs that you can deploy. The PCs attack a merchant? Here's the stat block for "merchant" which applies equally to both Melechor the respected purveyor of fine china, and CMOT Dibbler, sausage hawker.

elliott20
2015-07-15, 10:42 AM
or you can just SAY that he's statted, but not bother. I mean, let's face it, you only stat things out if you expect yourself to need it, right? If this is an NPC that is so powerful that you can't kill it, what difference does it make if you stat it out or not? It would end up being a waste of your time anyway. This is especially if you're talking about an NPCs who is less of a character and more of a plot device. It's not like the players are going to run into this thing in an encounter, and have to survive fighting it to move forward, right?

Zalphon
2015-07-15, 10:58 AM
or you can just SAY that he's statted, but not bother. I mean, let's face it, you only stat things out if you expect yourself to need it, right? If this is an NPC that is so powerful that you can't kill it, what difference does it make if you stat it out or not? It would end up being a waste of your time anyway. This is especially if you're talking about an NPCs who is less of a character and more of a plot device. It's not like the players are going to run into this thing in an encounter, and have to survive fighting it to move forward, right?


That's exactly how I look at it, but they are a bit Murderhobo in their approach. They're the kind of people who go to Sigil to kill the Lady of Pain. Well, one of them is.

Takewo
2015-07-15, 03:21 PM
That's exactly how I look at it, but they are a bit Murderhobo in their approach. They're the kind of people who go to Sigil to kill the Lady of Pain. Well, one of them is.

Then I think it's a matter of different approaches rather than a matter of whether it's a good idea or not.

Slipperychicken
2015-07-15, 04:00 PM
Unless you expect you might need the stats (i.e. A PC wants to arm-wrestle or murder it), then there's little reason to assign them. Obviously, a character who doesn't directly interact with the PCs doesn't need stats. Once you need the stats, however, you may want to call a break and assign whatever stats are relevant.

As a player, I see unstatted powerful NPCs as a red flag, much like infallible word-of-god DMPCs, or gameplay outcomes (as opposed to background or setting elements) determined by fiat where the game mechanics are already suitable. It makes me fear the GM will use them to cheat or otherwise strip the game of meaningful choices.

Zalphon
2015-07-15, 04:14 PM
Unless you expect you might need the stats (i.e. A PC wants to arm-wrestle or murder it), then there's little reason to assign them. Obviously, a character who doesn't directly interact with the PCs doesn't need stats. Once you need the stats, however, you may want to call a break and assign whatever stats are relevant.

As a player, I see unstatted powerful NPCs as a red flag, much like infallible word-of-god DMPCs, or gameplay outcomes (as opposed to background or setting elements) determined by fiat where the game mechanics are already suitable. It makes me fear the GM will use them to cheat or otherwise strip the game of meaningful choices.

That's a great concern and I think I should provide write ups on them for future DMs, who should use my system/setting if it ever gains any renown, about the consequences of using them to be Word-of-God devices.

erikun
2015-07-15, 06:50 PM
And in response to this dragon flying over the countryside--he resides in his personal Demi-Plane. He really is removed from the rest of the universe.
If the dragon is sequestered in its personal demiplane, is immortal, and is basically a god... then why would anyone talk about it as a "dragon"? It would probably be referred to as a dragon-god if anything, residing in its own private heaven, away from other gods and only accessable through a fifty mile journey while casting the correct ritual. It would be fine without stats, much like the deities themselves. (Most deities in D&D are unstatted and stats you do see are for their avatars, not the deities themselves.)

noob
2015-07-15, 07:04 PM
This is what any sane person says until he see the evil manual of gods and demigods after that he take a rifle and try to kill manual writers.

goto124
2015-07-15, 08:25 PM
There should be very very few NPCs so powerful that they don't need statblocks.

Unless it's a god-game. But god-games should use systems designed for them. Exalted?

Slipperychicken
2015-07-15, 08:31 PM
If the dragon is sequestered in its personal demiplane, is immortal, and is basically a god... then why would anyone talk about it as a "dragon"? It would probably be referred to as a dragon-god if anything, residing in its own private heaven, away from other gods and only accessable through a fifty mile journey while casting the correct ritual. It would be fine without stats, much like the deities themselves. (Most deities in D&D are unstatted and stats you do see are for their avatars, not the deities themselves.)

I would imagine that someone would have come up with a name for it, even if the dragon itself didn't tell anyone its name.

Zalphon
2015-07-16, 09:30 AM
Honestly as to why he's referred to as a dragon? He's the closest thing to a deity, but not quite there. A great analogy would be the Sorcerer-Kings of Dark Sun.

They're immensely powerful, but they've not crossed the threshold. Same in this case. They're have been no gods (they disappeared) for a few thousand years.

He's considered a god by those who reside in his Demi-Plane, but outside of there, he's viewed as the last of a dead race--if he's even real.

Lord Torath
2015-07-17, 02:41 PM
*snip stuff about polymorphing/transmuting the hydrogen inside a black hole*Interesting idea, but there's no hydrogen inside a black hole. After matter passes the event horizon it's compressed so much by gravity that neither protons, neutrons, or electrons can keep themselves separate from each other. You no longer have atoms, or even sub-atomic particles, let alone elements. Even outside of black holes, you can have matter so dense there's no hydrogen left, like with neutron stars (protons and electrons can no longer support their own weight).


Honestly as to why he's referred to as a dragon? He's the closest thing to a deity, but not quite there. A great analogy would be the Sorcerer-Kings of Dark Sun.

They're immensely powerful, but they've not crossed the threshold. Same in this case. They're have been no gods (they disappeared) for a few thousand years.Except that in the initial vision of Dark Sun, Sorcerer Kings are eventually meant to be defeatable by the PCs, who were meant to bring major change to the setting as they reached higher levels (Wow. That sentence got away from me a bit, didn't it?).

A better comparison would be the Star Beasts that hold some planets aloft in the Spelljammer setting. Even if the PCs manage to land on one (star beasts don't have gravity), there's just no meaningful way for them to affect one, short of DM-introduced plot devices/mcguffins.

In any case, I fully agree with not statting the "forces of nature" in your campaign

mephnick
2015-07-17, 03:07 PM
I don't stat anything except a few major NPCs that may affect the story line through combat, those that could become "boss fights".

Gods: No stats, you'll have to come up with an RP reason/strategy to confront a God and kill it. There's powerful demons and stuff with stats if you want to feel badass.

Low level or story NPCs: If they're unexpectedly in combat I can estimate what their stats should be based on other creatures I know. There's also usually templates I can flip to in the back of the Monster Manual (I primarily play 5e).

I have kids and a tiring job. I'm not statting up every little thing in my world just for the sake of a player's verisimilitude.

BWR
2015-07-17, 03:09 PM
NPCs need stats only when directly interacted with mechanically. If they don't have any mechanics interacting with them they don't need stats. If they are not intended to interact with mechanics but for some reason do come into contact with mechanics, you should be able to just throw whatever (semi-)appropriate numbers and abilities on them to prevent bogging down the game with inventing stats. You can even get away with assigning a few things that are likely to show up but not have to bother stat'ing out the whole thing, like noting "Trick People X" or "Read People Y" or "Alter Reality at a Whim" .

But the most important thing to note for any NPC that isn't a random passer-by is Name, Profession, Personality and Motivation, and Initial Reaction to PCs (followed by Current Opinion of Other NPCs) and some note of about how powerful they are in the grand scheme of things. Just tell your players to start playing other games where NPCs aren't given proper stats or where the stats are given but generally useless because no one every encounters them.

Frozen_Feet
2015-07-17, 03:10 PM
Any description whatsoever of an in-game object is, in essence, a stat block. Any mathematical model is just a choice on how to simulate said object. If you're not constrained to a set of already-existing simulations, it's fairly trivial to make a truly invincible NPC. Then again, so is making almost any other sort of NPC.

Also, anyone who thinks d20 deities can be killed "because they have stats" has either not read or not comprehended the rules in Deities & Demigods. Because by the rules-as-written, it's possible to stat out a god with abilities exceeding those of the human GM and impossible to simulate even with a supercomputer.

If a d20 god is beatable at all, it's due to GM fiat, though to be honest, you can't really play gods without relying mostly on fiat because the rules as written are impossible.

Jay R
2015-07-17, 04:02 PM
Engages a mundane NPC? Mechanics-Dependent Combat.

Engages an unstat-blocked NPC... Likely DM-fiat-based combat, as you put it.

Before getting too upset over that, let's remember that the stat block is itself DM fiat. It's just produced by fiat in advance. I don't create stats for every merchant, tavernkeeper, guard, or farmer. I only create stats for people that the PCs are likely to fight.

Since my players don't tend to attack random passers-by, that works fine. If somehow they start fighting an NPC without a stat block, I can usually provide all the stats needed on the fly, and be pretty close to what I'd have decided if I'd done it beforehand.

But I don't recommend telling anybody which NPCs aren't statted up. That's a clue about who might be preparing to attack them.

So:
1. There is no need to pre-build every NPC.
2. There is no need to tell the players that fact.

Frozen_Feet
2015-07-17, 04:42 PM
Most rules-light systems, including several retroclones of D&D, are geared towards spontaneous stat generation. When you only have a handful of stats you need, there's negligible difference in time consumption between writing out statblocks beforehand versus creating them on the fly. In Noitahovi, to give a concrete example, "faceless obstacles" (such as minor NPCs and natural threats) only need one variable. Named NPCs or personalized threats might need four or five plus spells.

For something like BECMI or LotFP, you only need to know HD, morale, equipment (inc. natural weapons or such), and movement speeds. Things like saves and to-hit modifiers directly follow from HD, AC and damage follow from equipment. If you describe something as "a tall, strong-looking male clad in plate, with his arms resting on the hilt of his longsword", you and the players can extrapolate most of the information from that even if you threw the character out of your hat.

Knaight
2015-07-17, 04:55 PM
If you describe something as "a tall, strong-looking male clad in plate, with his arms resting on the hilt of his longsword", you and the players can extrapolate most of the information from that even if you threw the character out of your hat.

Up to a point anyways - there's a lot of leeway past that. The character might be a heavily armed and armored noble who's strong, rich enough to buy expensive equipment, and lacking in actual combat skill. The character also might be a veteran of several wars, adventures, and the like, extremely capable but not showing obvious signs of it until they actually start using said sword. Mechanically, this could be the difference between a 1 HD and 9 HD character, which makes a huge difference.

With that said, the players are able to gather about as much as the characters, so that works out.

Slipperychicken
2015-07-17, 06:45 PM
Up to a point anyways - there's a lot of leeway past that. The character might be a heavily armed and armored noble who's strong, rich enough to buy expensive equipment, and lacking in actual combat skill. The character also might be a veteran of several wars, adventures, and the like, extremely capable but not showing obvious signs of it until they actually start using said sword. Mechanically, this could be the difference between a 1 HD and 9 HD character, which makes a huge difference.

With that said, the players are able to gather about as much as the characters, so that works out.

There really ought to be rules for sizing characters up to determine their challenge or skill level. Seeing someone's response to violence and talk of violence, the way he holds himself, maneuvers, and talks about swordplay, may all serve as indicators. Perhaps a successful Insight roll could tell you, with disadvantage if the target isn't doing or saying anything related to combat.

Knaight
2015-07-17, 07:52 PM
There really ought to be rules for sizing characters up to determine their challenge or skill level. Seeing someone's response to violence and talk of violence, the way he holds himself, maneuvers, and talks about swordplay, may all serve as indicators. Perhaps a successful Insight roll could tell you, with disadvantage if the target isn't doing or saying anything related to combat.

At the same time, there are a lot of cases where this doesn't necessarily fit. Once someone is actually fighting you can generally get some idea, but there's plenty of literary examples of people who deliberately hide their skill, or fundamentally peaceful people who aren't fond of violence but are very capable of it, or normal looking people who turn out to be extremely dangerous that having it be necessarily obvious isn't true to genre. Plenty of similar examples can also be found in history.

Then there are people who advertise. Known heraldry, known names, a tendency to brag (though plenty of incompetents have this one) and such are already there. The information is out there.

NichG
2015-07-17, 08:46 PM
Any description whatsoever of an in-game object is, in essence, a stat block. Any mathematical model is just a choice on how to simulate said object. If you're not constrained to a set of already-existing simulations, it's fairly trivial to make a truly invincible NPC. Then again, so is making almost any other sort of NPC.

Also, anyone who thinks d20 deities can be killed "because they have stats" has either not read or not comprehended the rules in Deities & Demigods. Because by the rules-as-written, it's possible to stat out a god with abilities exceeding those of the human GM and impossible to simulate even with a supercomputer.

If a d20 god is beatable at all, it's due to GM fiat, though to be honest, you can't really play gods without relying mostly on fiat because the rules as written are impossible.

I don't really think this argument makes sense. Rules-as-written, there's nothing which sets standards for the plans and decisions made by characters with a particular stat value. And even if there were, there's nothing specific to deities about that. This kind of thing would apply as much to the player of an Int 50 Wizard as to the GM of an Int 50 deity. So then it just becomes 'if anything happens in the game, its because of the players and the GM, not just because of the rules', which is certainly true, but that makes it even more important to stay aware of player psychology issues like 'if it has stats, they'll try to kill it'.

Or are you talking about the ability of deities to have foreknowledge regarding their domains? That can be made a non-issue via a number of different mechanical methods, so long as the would-be godkillers take it into account (teleport through time, doing all your planning within a few feet of an imprisoned Elder Evil, etc).

Darth Ultron
2015-07-17, 09:25 PM
I guess you could have special pet NPCs with no stat blocks. Why does it even matter?


Say there is ''a guy in a cloak'', does not matter if he has stats or not...if the players attack him, it is all up to the DM's wishes of what happens. A PC can do 100 points of damage and the DM can just say ''nothing happens''. Now, I know some people think that the DM is to be played like a robot that follows the rules...but that is not how reality works.

It is not like the players ever see NPC stat blocks, so they would not even know there was not one.

Knaight
2015-07-17, 09:35 PM
I guess you could have special pet NPCs with no stat blocks. Why does it even matter?

Alternately, you could have setting relevant NPCs who don't have stat blocks because you have better things to do with page space. This is hardly a "special pet NPC" category.

Jay R
2015-07-17, 11:18 PM
There really ought to be rules for sizing characters up to determine their challenge or skill level.

In story-telling there is no such rule, and the Cardinal's guards (and the Musketeers) can fail to recognize that the young D'Artagnan is a great swordsman, and the westerner who wants to make his reputation can fail to recognize the skill of Kid Curry. Inigo can be astounded at the skill of the Man in Black, and a mugger can mistake Crocodile Dundee as an easy victim. Or the DLF can fail to recognize the fighting skill of Peter and Edmund, or the shooting skill of Susan.

And it often happens that an unknown athlete comes in and does what nobody thought he could do, as when Tom Brady came in when Drew Bledsoe was injured. Also consider the story of Jim Morris, the 34-year-old rookie. And I've been in fencing tournaments when we all knew who the best fencers were - until some guy we didn't recognize suddenly turned out to be brilliant.

"All that is gold does not glitter.
Not all those who wander are lost."

Frozen_Feet
2015-07-18, 09:06 AM
I don't really think this argument makes sense. Rules-as-written, there's nothing which sets standards for the plans and decisions made by characters with a particular stat value.

Yes there is. Starting with basic things like alignment and skill checks and continuing to things like portofolio sense and remote sensing, the rules explicitly and clearly define a possible design space, a standard, for character actions. And divine rules grant deities mechanical knowledge of events which are unknowable to a human GM before they happen.

Then there's the fact that Divine Rank 1 actually does kind of give you overwhelming mechanical power, even forgetting the ridiculous amounts of HD and class levels typically accompanying it. The first god(s) to ascend can pre-empt every attempt to usurp them. Elder Evils etc. corner cases are, frankly, meaningless, because a god can trivially exclude access to such character resources.

A GM can purposefully ignore those rules impossible to simulate or leading to undesireable results, but if you claim "the argument doesn't make sense" because of that, it's akin to saying "the rules aren't broken because you can just not use the broken parts".

NichG
2015-07-18, 10:03 AM
Yes there is. Starting with basic things like alignment and skill checks and continuing to things like portofolio sense and remote sensing, the rules explicitly and clearly define a possible design space, a standard, for character actions. And divine rules grant deities mechanical knowledge of events which are unknowable to a human GM before they happen.

Then there's the fact that Divine Rank 1 actually does kind of give you overwhelming mechanical power, even forgetting the ridiculous amounts of HD and class levels typically accompanying it. The first god(s) to ascend can pre-empt every attempt to usurp them. Elder Evils etc. corner cases are, frankly, meaningless, because a god can trivially exclude access to such character resources.

A GM can purposefully ignore those rules impossible to simulate or leading to undesireable results, but if you claim "the argument doesn't make sense" because of that, it's akin to saying "the rules aren't broken because you can just not use the broken parts".

Since your initial claim was ambiguous, I addressed two possible interpretations which seemed likely to me as to what you meant. What you're objecting to here is mostly restricted to the first of the two, which is the usual assertion that 'very high mental stats are super-human in a way that means that the possessor would automatically know the right actions to take to counter any strategy, even if the GM would not be able to figure them out'.

Since it doesn't seem you're making that assertion, the second interpretation is the important one. In the second case, there's a handful of deific powers which potentially pose fundamental difficulties (e.g. difficulties that are distinct to going after deities). Everything else can be pretty much be emulated with things that non-deific characters can get access to within the realm of PO.

The handful of troublesome divine abilities are, essentially: Alter Reality (arbitrarily large permanent effect stacks), Arcane Mastery (similar issues to Pun-Pun if the spontaneous authoring of new spells is treated as truly open-ended), Rejuvenation (requires equal or higher Divine Rank to decisively defeat), Life and Death (and its variants), and Portfolio Sense.

However, not every deity will have one of those abilities. If we just ask about things that every deity with at least DR1 would have, there are a few things you mention. I would say that Remote Sensing is basically a non-issue because it requires a standard action to direct, so by the time the deity is using it they already have to know enough to target it since they can't just look everywhere, which just makes it a very flexible Scry. The troublesome ability is Portfolio Sense. That is also the 'non-computable' one that you mention since it provides the deity information across time and without the will to use it or need to be otherwise prepared, so lets focus on that. Demigods, Lesser Deities, and Intermediate Deities (DR1-15) can only use portfolio sense in the present and past, so that's actually quite manageable for a human to run since there are no time shenanigans. So within that range, we're still just talking about big numbers and a highly protected target, but its not fundamentally different than, say, any other highly prepared epic-level character.

The big thing is that even in the present, portfolio sense detects the location of events and the number of people involved, not the details. So even if 'a plot to kill the deity' always counts as part of their portfolio, that plot can be hidden in the noise of a lot of other portfolio-related events which will appear to be bigger or more important. The deity has to specifically choose to sense the event, which is a standard action, in order to get details. Even if, for example, the deity did gain automatic knowledge of a generic descriptor of how the event relates to their portfolio (e.g. 'this is a plot to kill you, therefore it relates'), a Demigod would need that plot to directly involve at least 1000 people to show up on their radar, and Lesser Deities need at least 500. So the standard party of adventurers would easily fly under the radar so long as they're careful to keep things contained.

There's nothing mechanical about a DR1 deity that would automatically let it exclude all possible counters to its abilities. Like any other character, if you're running it with stats and mechanics, it has to take a specific sequence of actions in order to achieve its ends. Therefore it can't just declare 'I don't like Elder Evils and how they can hide people from me, so therefore its not a problem'. They have to actually take the sequence of actions to find and deal with each Elder Evil individually - that isn't a mechanic they have access to (it could be a narrative power certainly, but there's nothing in Deities and Demigods which mechanically arrives directly at that end). Similarly, they don't have mechanics which let them simply declare that they will take out every character who could potentially ever become a threat - they would have to actually take a specific series of actions in order to bring about that end. And to that extent, there's no difference between a DR1 deity systematically wiping out sentient races to block the emergence of a threat, and a Lv20 Wizard systematically wiping out sentient races to block the emergence of a threat.

Morty
2015-07-18, 10:06 AM
I don't think the need to provide statistics is dependent on "power" or "importance" of an NPC, which are nebulous terms anyway. What it depends on is whether the PCs are likely to engage with the NPC in a manner that involves your system's mechanics. No more and no less.

In Vampire: the Requiem chronicle I ran a year ago, I didn't bother statting most of the plot-critical NPCs, because the conflict didn't require it. The only mechanical interaction I had to take into account was determining how difficult it should be for them to pick up that the Sheriff isn't being quite honest with them. The NPC stats I did write up ended up not half as relevant as I'd planned, too.

Frozen_Feet
2015-07-18, 10:58 AM
@NichG: that a deity has to "take specific sequence of actions" instead of just saying "no" doesn't matter, because it's a trivial to a an 20+ HD character with divine ranks to do so. It invariably takes a non-god more steps to threaten a god than for the god to cut them short, because gods have significantly expanded move and resource pool. Your argument is akin to an old one about computer not being able to win at Chess by simple number-crunching. Well, cut to modern day, your run-of-the-mill computer can basically beat any human player without computer aid themselves, and they do it... by number-crunching.

That the opponent is technically playing the same game does not mean it is beatable. For more extreme example, swap Chess for Checkers. As Checkers is a solved game, the best you can hope against an AI is a tie... and that's only if you play perfectly yourself. Make a single mistake, and the AI will win.

There are several abilities besides DivR 1 in d20 which give a similarly insurmountable advantage against anyone who doesn't also have them. In any scenario or simulation where there are multiple entities racing for such advantages, the first one to reach one is in a position to Win the Game, forever and ever.

NichG
2015-07-18, 08:50 PM
@NichG: that a deity has to "take specific sequence of actions" instead of just saying "no" doesn't matter, because it's a trivial to a an 20+ HD character with divine ranks to do so. It invariably takes a non-god more steps to threaten a god than for the god to cut them short, because gods have significantly expanded move and resource pool. Your argument is akin to an old one about computer not being able to win at Chess by simple number-crunching. Well, cut to modern day, your run-of-the-mill computer can basically beat any human player without computer aid themselves, and they do it... by number-crunching.

That the opponent is technically playing the same game does not mean it is beatable. For more extreme example, swap Chess for Checkers. As Checkers is a solved game, the best you can hope against an AI is a tie... and that's only if you play perfectly yourself. Make a single mistake, and the AI will win.

Actually, the way you've set up the argument, the game is extremely asymmetric in the PCs' favor. By arguing that 'any' god should be unbeatable rather than just that 'some' gods will be unbeatable or 'an optimized god' will be unbeatable, you're giving the choice of target to the PCs, with the only requirement being that they have at least DvR 1. So that could easily be one of the full-noncaster-build deities such as Hercules (DvR 5, Fighter 20/Barbarian 20, fixed list of SLAs). In addition, since this is about stats, a statted NPC that is unaware of the PC plans to kill them has no reason to change its stats, but PCs who are proactively seeking to kill a target can use methods in the game to change their stats - retraining, advancement, careful selection of members of their hit squad.

So the deity in this case has to specify exactly what its abilities will be before it knows who its enemies will be. In essence, it has to optimize to defend against every conceivable enemy (and because of the 'any' clause in your argument, it doesn't get to do that with character build resources, only those things which are still flexible under the fixed build given by its stats such as gear, the contents of its divine realm, etc).

Having to play defense in a game of rocket tag is a severe disadvantage, and its baked into the asymmetric goals here. The deity, even if they try to wipe out every character who exceeds Lv10 in order to hold onto their power, has no final win condition. They would have to maintain that level of extermination consistently and systematically forever, and in every location across the planes. Places like Sigil and the Spire are automatic holes in the ability to be consistent - all it takes is a group of adventurers with long lifespans to hang out in Sigil for a few centuries and gathering power, and there's not much the deity can do to bring their DvR into play against them.



There are several abilities besides DivR 1 in d20 which give a similarly insurmountable advantage against anyone who doesn't also have them. In any scenario or simulation where there are multiple entities racing for such advantages, the first one to reach one is in a position to Win the Game, forever and ever.

You still have to provide the specific sequence of actions which sets the game into a non-recoverable state for all other agents (not to mention that the first entity who achieves one of those top-end powers would also have to have the ethos and motivation to implement that set of actions, which, depending on the actions required, could be entirely inconsistent). Otherwise there's a missing step to the logical argument. What is the state of the multiverse which prevents anyone from ever taking levels in wizard, and how does anyone who just has DvR 1 and no other particular abilities other than what they get from DvR 1 bring it about? What is the state of the multiverse which prevents anyone from ever being promoted to divine rank, and how does someone who just has DvR 1 bring it about? What is the state of the multiverse which prevents anyone from doing magic item crafting, and how does someone who just has DvR 1 bring it about?